Content Management Matters to Everyone

Traditionally, content management systems were the domain of site managers. Site managers need a way to publish content to their site easily and apply that content to existing templates. Content management has a lot more to offer though.

Content aware organizations will create systems to encourage different departments to find, share and track content from throughout the organization. Imagine how much more value that video would get if sales used it with customers, if social media shared it with followers and if professional services used it for training.

A good content system implementation doesn’t have to be expensive, but it should:

reward contributors by being able to track how and where content was used

be easy to search and find content

be easy to share content straight from the system

Be open tp the public so your fans, resellers and customers can access and distribute for you.

A great example of a public CMS is Microsoft’s Showcase. Originally intended for marketers as platform to store and share videos, it has evolved as the place for employees, customers and partners to find information in video form.

As someone who works with Microsoft regularly, I check to see if the content I need already exists before I ask the client to create something new. At the same time, as a contributor I can track content I created and report back on that value to the client who financed the content.

Another approach, is more magazine or blog style — where content is created for a specific purpose on the Website, but accessible and searchable for easy sharing by other marketing teams. Boeing’s home page features contain rich photos and videos and are used throughout the organization. Columbia’s Explore community site, contains all kinds of tagged rich content and stories. that get used throughout the organization, including point of sale.